New Zealand's indigenous people
reclaim power and position using
the democratic methods that
supplanted their civilizationThird article of eight
How does a vastly outnumbered minority successfully challenge a majority? Five hundred thousand Maori are making clear progress with the 3.1 million non-Maori in New Zealand, just as Hawaii's 225,000 Hawaiians are making progress with more than 900,000 other residents here. Activists say it's much too slow, but even they agree the pace is picking up.
You start with democracy where protests are allowed and the legal methods of change exist, beginning at the ballot box and carrying on into the courts and government.
You have a rallying point as a basis for righting old wrongs -- the bloodily violated 1840 Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand, the 1893 overthrow of the monarchy in Hawaii with the transfer of its lands to non-Hawaiian hands.
You can wave before everybody the painful fact that your people who were overrun haven't all adjusted to the new order and culture imposed by whites in the 19th century. They have much higher unemployment than others, die much younger, drop out of school at much higher rates and are imprisoned at much higher rates.
The record also shows that Polynesian populations in both New Zealand and Hawaii shrank by the mid-1800s to only about 40,000 from several hundred thousand in the previous century because of the introduction of Western diseases to which they had little natural resistance.
You develop an academic foundation for your cause. You stir resentments by bringing up old truths and some half-truths. You get attention with marches, demonstrations, land occupations, talks, press releases and more. You implicitly threaten worse. You educate to win converts both within your ranks and from outside.
By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
From Aotearoa, Jamie Ferguson, Howard Jeremiah and
Daniel Jeremiah, left to right, have their faces marked
for traditional Maori "welcoming back" ceremonies
held here in May 1995.It isn't simple. There are many views, many voices on your side, but the obvious need to improve things brings loose confederation. Even though you are out-numbered the political middle begins to come your way. It, too, shares a sense of guilt over the way your people were treated. It would like to make things better. Capitalism in the raw has no conscience, but democracy does. They work well together.
I visited New Zealand for 11 days last month and was struck by parallels such as the above between the Maori and Hawaiian -- even to the wide variance in aspirations. Some seem impossible of achievement like the complete removal of whites from the ruling structure. Others are already on the way to achievement such as language, cultural and traditional rights restorations.
Land, money and political power remain the critical areas. The minorities want it back. The majorities are yielding slowly and have a yet-undefined point of ultimate resistance.
I found a surprising cross-section of Maori and white (called pakeha) New Zealand academics, political leaders and news people feeling good about the future. Political scientist/commentator Nigel Roberts of Wellington's Victoria University pointed out that successive Labor and National governments have remained committed to Maori reparations ever since 1984. Labor took the big steps, but National (now back in power with a coalition partner led by a Maori) hasn't tried to reverse them. Neither has played the race card in seeking votes.
In 1996 about 130,000 Maori signed a separate voter roll and thereby earned the right to elect five Maori members of parliament. Eleven other Maori MPs were elected in regular party competition bringing their total to 16, a record, in the 120-member, one-house body. A higher Maori roll signup can raise the minimum number of Maori seats in 1999.
The colorful and controversial No. 1 Maori in government, Winston Peters, is deputy prime minister and treasurer. He got there by bringing his 17 First New Zealand party votes, only seven of them Maori, to the side of the 44 National party members. This created a coalition with a one-vote majority he vows will hold until the 1999 elections.
Peters is not primarily focused on Maori affairs because he has his sights set on being a future prime minister. He has gotten off to a rough start, including an inebriated shoving match with another MP, but is still considered to have long-term viability.
There is no clear consensus on Maori goals. Donna Awatere-Huata, a Maori MP, told me there are 500 hands on the Maori helm, but even she is optimistic.
Near the center of things is the Waitangi Tribunal, set up by government to adjudicate claims based on violations of the 1840 treaty between Maori chiefs and British settlers. It is to negotiate settlements if possible. The government has removed a $1 billion cap on how much it will award, but all settlements have to go to Parliament for final approval. The year 2000 is the target for disposing of the major claims.
A number already are resolved. Maoris have been awarded 50 percent of sustainable offshore fishing quotas, with these to be allocated among tribes by a fisheries commission.
The Tainui tribe south of Auckland has been given a settlement worth $170 million awarding it Waikato University lands, an agricultural research center and former air force and army lands.
Waitomo claimants have received a famous tourist attraction, the Waitomo Glow Worm caves, under joint management with the government, and adjoining lands.
The pending shocker and potentially biggest claim concerns Taranaki on the North Island. The Tribunal found 2 million acres of land violently seized after the treaty. The invasion and sacking of the peaceful village of Parihaka, it said, "must rank with the most heinous action of any government in any country in the last century." It says the disempowerment of Maoris there was worse than the land expropriation and continues today.
Ranginui Walker, a widely quoted professor of Maori studies at University of Auckland, told me "the tribunal is rewriting history and some of it is very embarrassing." Facing the truth is positive, several people said.
All of these settlements involve only fractions of the land seized from the tribes illegally and only cents on current value dollars. There seems to be recognition that full restitution would bankrupt the country and be politically impossible.
Tribes are using their settlements to form business corporations intended to grow their money. They support, with varying priorities, education, health and reinvestment. One tribe is fishing off East Africa and selling the catch in Europe. Young people are being funded to study law, medicine and more.
Other claims involve traditional gathering rights, broadcast rights, and changing New Zealand's name to its original Maori name, Aotearoa. Hundreds are pending. Only government-held lands are being returned now. Future claims against private lands could pose a whole new set of problems which the government might have to mediate.
New Zealand Maoris have a tribal structure which has no counterpart in Hawaii possibly because Hawaii was united by a single king before it was overrun. New Zealand never had a king. However, a respectedchiefess of the Tainui tribe, Dame Te Ataivangikaahu, is called the Maori Queen. She was paid a call by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
Blood quantum does not figure in identifying Maoris. One must instead recite a geneaology to be accepted by a tribe. Very small blood quantum is no problem. Tribal awards are complicated by a mass migration of Maoris to the cities between 1950 and 1970 with 80 percent now living in urban areas.
The Waitangi settlements are only part of a process that will be ongoing for a long time. Maori differ greatly on many options including whether they want cultural isolation with a Maori parliament and a white parliament or continued unification and interaction in a bi-cultural society such as New Zealand already is becoming. Sovereignty is seen sometimes as individual, sometimes as group.
Maori drunkeness and family violence are depicted harshly in a book, "Once Were Warriors," by Alan Duff who lived that life itself. He has broken with the producers of a movie based on the book that seems to advocate separatism. In his regular columns in Wellington's Evening Post and other newspapers, Duff contends Maoris must make their way in the existing world. I found no one in New Zealand disputing the drunken family violence the movie depicted, only varying estimates of its prevalence from a tiny portion of Maori families to as much as 25 percent in some localities.
Maori Professor Ranginui Walker is particularly dismissive of Duff as ignorant and guilty of creating stereotypes. He argues that the U.S. experience shows melting pots don't work. Blacks, Jews and other ethnic groups still are set apart, he says.
Sir Tipene O'Reagan, chairman of the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission, couldn't see me but has said: "It seems fatuous that we are going to ... have this separate physical area with its own administration and legal system and the trappings of sovereignty. We are not going to live on reservations. The only way for Maori to live in the new century is in the whole world."
Dr. Ngatata Love is a university business dean who has taken leave to be executive director of Te Puni Kuriri, the ministry of Maori development. His immediate goal is to end the statistical disparity between Maoris and others in the areas of education, health, joblessness and imprisonment. The government is fully committed, he says. The statistical disparity is diminishing but remains enormous.
Donna Awatere-Huata, an early and continuing activist for Maori sovereignty, shocked many when she successfully ran for Parliament last October as a member of the right-wing Act Party. Her reason was simple, she said. Act stands for school privatization, vouchers and community salary-setting that are opposed by the strong teachers union. She sees privatization as the way to build a successful Maori school system.
Sir Graham Latimer has been chairman for 25 years of one of New Zealand's few national Maori organizations, the New Zealand Maori Council. He and others mortgaged homes and boats in the 1980s to press lawsuits over land and fishing rights. Its 45 members represent 364 Maori communities from 50 tribes and 15 regional districts.
Latimer says Maoris have made great progress in the past 10 years and are progressing faster now, but still have far to go. The cultural destruction, he said, never can be fully remedied.
Referring to Hawaii, Latimer said: "Across the board we are ahead of you. In business, education and background we are behind you. We are ahead of you in culture, language and customs, but Hawaii is catching up." He added: "Hawaii will become one of the leaders of the Polynesian race. No doubt about it."
Public, private efforts
enhance status of HawaiiansPost-U.S. annexation efforts to improve the status of Hawaiians started with the passage by Congress in 1921 of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act to put Hawaiians back on the land. It fell far short of its goals but now is being invigorated.Statehood in 1959 empowered all Hawaii's people with more democracy and voting representation in Congress. It created leverage to get from Congress an apology for U.S. involvement in the 1893 overthrow of the monarchy plus millions in federal funds for Hawaiian education and health.
Our 1978 Constitutional Convention created an Office of Hawaiian Affairs with trustees elected from a special Hawaiian voter roll. OHA is funded with a share of revenues from the lands that once belonged to the monarchy. It is empowered to own land. Other 1978 Con Con amendments protect traditional Hawaiian rights, subject to state regulation, and mandate Hawaiian education programs.
Our first Hawaiian state governor, John Waihee, pushed all of these changes -- first in the Con Con, then as governor from 1986 to 1994. He "made whole" the Hawaiian Homes program with more land and enhanced funding.
He also started a process at the state level to hear 5,000 claims for damages against the Hawaiian Homes program since statehood in 1959, as a prelude to asking the U.S. to hear claims for the period before statehood. When the U.S. defense forces gave up use of Kahoolawe as a target island it was placed in trust for Hawaiians.
Apart from these public efforts, four trusts created by Hawaiian royalty make significant contributions. The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estate supports the Kamehameha Schools. The Queen Emma Foundation supports health care and operates Queen's Medical Center. The Liliuokalani Trust supports needy children. Lunalilo Estate operates a home for the aged.
-- A. A. Smyser
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